Based on these facts, a grand jury decided that it wasn’t worth having a trial. Nothing to do with the cop being innocent or guilty. They decided there wasn’t even sufficient evidence to commit the case for a criminal trial before a judge and jury.

Here are some other little tidbits:

Right now in the USA, there’s not an accurate count of how many civilians are killed by the police each year. That’s right, nobody knows. Let alone which of those were unjustified.

A grassroots movement found that in 2012, police officers, security guards and self-appointed vigilantes killed at least 313 African-Americans. The real numbers may be far higher, but the statistics suggest that every 28 hours, a black man is killed by a security officer.

The City of New York used to have a “stop-and-frisk” law. In the wake of a death in custody, the NYPD was required to provide information from 1999 to 2009. The resulting decade of data showed that cops disproportionately stopped people of colour, often without cause and with greater use of force.

That law may be gone, but hey, look at what’s still happening.

The mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, said that he and his wife, Chirlane McCray (who is black), had spent years teaching their son, now 17, how to “take special care” around police officers.

Ramsey Orta, 22, who filmed Eric Garner’s death was indicted by the grand jury for weapon possession charges on August 2. He claims the weapon was planted on him, in retaliation for filming the Garner incident on July 17.

Protests continued for a second night in New York and cities around the US on Thursday, December 4. Protestors disrupted traffic, but remained largely peaceful, yet there were still multiple arrests.